Everything we know so far about Avengers: Age of Ultron

While the Guardians of the Galaxy are more than earning their touted reputation as "the Rolling Stones to the Avengers' Beatles", fan anticipation for Joss Whedon's Avengers sequel is nevertheless at fever pitch, with Comic-Con attendees camping out for a record 36 hours this year in order to get a seat for the movie's Hall H panel.

Details are unsurprisingly thin on the ground, given that we're a good nine months away from Age of Ultron's release, but quotes from Whedon and the footage shown at Comic-Con have dropped some substantial hints about what's to come for Tony Stark & co.

Below, Digital Spy rounds up everything we know so far about Avengers: Age of Ultron...

Marvel Studios

The Avengers are friendsâ€¦
Actual friends, as in the kind of friends who hang out and drink beer and play party games. The Comic-Con footage opened with the entire gang (plus former SHIELD agent Maria Hill) chilling on the rooftop of Avengers Tower, taking it in turns to try and lift Thor's hammer. Naturally, they all fail, although Cap does manage to shift it an inch or two.

The group dynamic feels much more established in this scene, suggesting that the team may have been working together for a while before Age of Ultron picks up. Chris Evans revealed during the brief Hall H panel that "since SHIELD fell apart, it's more about this group of people depending on each other, without a clear leader."

Except when they're enemies
But things aren't all rosy within the group. What got the biggest crowd reaction in Hall H was a shot of an enraged Hulk facing off against Tony Stark, who's clad in the Hulkbuster armour. Since the first Avengers showed Tony and Bruce Banner driving off to go and be Science Bros together, this fight should pack an emotional punch along with the literal ones.

"It can't just be a good fight â€“ it's got to be about something," Downey Jr has said of the sequence. "Nobody wins when two people who are friends fight." Another brief shot shows Thor grabbing Tony by the throat, so the latter just isn't having a good time of it at all.

Bruce Banner is not in a good place
At various points during the footage, we see Bruce looking sickly in a snowy forest, and wrapped in a blanket shivering on the Quinjet. Coupled with the Hulkbuster fight sequence, this is pretty strong evidence that he's having more difficulty controlling "the other guy".

Natasha, who was memorably terrorized by the Hulk in The Avengers, now seems to have some ability to calm him down â€“ one shot shows her touching her palm to his, adding fuel to the fire of Natasha/Bruce romance rumours.

Ultron is the villainâ€¦
James Spader plays super-strong robotic AI Ultron, who in the footage crashes the Avengers' beer-and-hammer party to inform them that they are all killers. "The only path to peace is your extinction," he tells them, before a small army of robots attacks the gang.

In a Frankenstein-esque twist, Ultron is Tony Stark's own creation, devised as a means for him to give up his Iron Man duties by transferring them onto an artificially intelligent substitute. The only problem is, Ultron is nuts. "He's not a creature of logic â€“ he's a robot who is genuinely disturbed," Whedon has said.

But he may not be the only one
Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen join the cast as orphaned mutant siblings Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, aka Pietro and Wanda Maximoff. While very few details about their role in the story have been released, the footage shows a very angry Scarlet Witch casting what looks like some serious dark magic. At least initially, the pair look likely to be antagonists rather than part of the Avengers.

And while Whedon and Tom Hiddleston have both insisted that Loki won't appear at all in Age of Ultron, his scepter definitely will. The weapon had a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in The Winter Soldier, and is glimpsed in the Comic-Con footage.

JARVIS gets an evil upgrade
Paul Bettany, who's been voicing Tony's artificially intelligent computer since Iron Man, will play the humanoid The Vision. Based on the canon, Ultron will reconfigure JARVIS into The Vision in order to serve as his henchman, but The Vision will turn on him and side with the Avengers.

Bettany has promised a complete character arc for The Vision: "The thing that appealed to me was this nascent creature being born, and being both omnipotent and totally naÃ¯ve, and the danger of that."

Marvel Studios

The Winter Soldier hasn't been forgotten
Some fans have been wondering how Captain America would play into things in Age of Ultron, given that when we last saw him he was hell-bent on finding his brainwashed former BFF Bucky.

Speaking at Nerd HQ, Whedon promised that Cap's mission wouldn't be forgotten in all the apocalyptic excitement. "The fact is, Ultron is a clear and present danger and Bucky's in the wind," he said. "We do mention the fact that [finding Bucky] is his primary thing, but he's also working with the Avengers. We're not ignoring it, but he definitely has to deal with a mad eight-foot robot, because that's one of those things that, if you put it off, it just gets worse."

The end is nigh
Seriously. Tony Stark says so. "It's the end â€“ the end of the path I started us on," he says ominously in the footage, as brief scenes of global destruction play out on screen. "Nothing lasts forever," Black Widow replies.

The increasingly dark teaser wraps up with a haunting shot of Tony waking up on what looks like a battlefield (or possibly Thanos's tomb), looking over in horror at Captain America's broken shield, and the bodies of all five other Avengers. Since Scarlet Witch has the power to warp reality, this is almost certainly an illusion or a dream sequence, or a really mean April Fool's joke.

But even though this particular scene isn't what it seems, things are looking decidedly bleak for the gang, with rumours emerging that at least one major player won't make it out of the sequel alive. And given how many fake-outs Marvel have pulled on us lately, it's about time somebody snuffed it for real.

Avengers: Age of Ultron will be released on May 1, 2015.

Watch highlights from the film's Comic-Con panel below:

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